DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran broke his silence Sunday on Supergirl’s bruising opening weekend, calling the film’s soft performance a setback rather than a signal — and insisting the studio’s long-range plan for its rebooted universe remains intact.
“While Supergirl didn’t meet our box office expectations, it’s just one component of a broader, long-term strategy at DC Studios that we remain confident in,” Safran told the New York Times. The remarks landed after a weekend that left little room for optimism: the Craig Gillespie-directed film opened to $38 million domestically and $68 million globally, finishing second to Toy Story 5, which pulled in $70 million in its second weekend.
The numbers invite an uncomfortable comparison. Last year’s Superman, the DCU’s launch film, earned $618 million worldwide — a haul Supergirl is extremely unlikely to approach. The domestic figure barely edged past Joker: Folie a Deux’s $37.6 million opening in 2024, a film widely considered a commercial failure. With a reported production budget of around $175 million, the path to profitability looks steep.
Critics were split, though mostly on Milly Alcock’s side rather than the film’s. Across both positive and negative reviews, Alcock was singled out as the film’s strongest asset, with critics praising a portrayal that is vulnerable and compassionate while remaining sharp. The film sits at 61 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 49 percent on Metacritic, with recurring complaints about murky action sequences and a bumpy narrative. Some observers noted puzzlement that DC chose to make Supergirl only its second DCU release on a $186 million budget, with a director who had never worked in the superhero genre and a writer with no prior feature film credits.
Part of the creative challenge, analysts noted, was tonal: where Superman projected optimism, Supergirl leaned darker — a deliberate choice by James Gunn to give each DCU film a distinct identity, but one audiences haven’t fully embraced yet.
Milly Alcock is confirmed to return as Kara Zor-El in Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow, though a standalone sequel appears unlikely in the near term. The next DCU theatrical release is James Watkins’ Clayface, set for October 23, followed by Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow on July 9, 2027. The Lanterns series is also expected to premiere on HBO later this year.
